


Young at Heart

by tmariea (OccasionalArtist)



Category: Tales of Zestiria
Genre: Cuddles, EPILEO, Fluff, Hair Braiding, I will claim this to be nothing more than self (and Gabby) - indulgent fluff, M/M, No Plot/Plotless, Pillow & Blanket Forts, Post-Canon, Seraph!Sorey, Tickle Fights, lightning seraph!Sorey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2019-01-08 02:43:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12245517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OccasionalArtist/pseuds/tmariea
Summary: Sorey and Mikleo build a pillow fort, all in the name of Sorey regaining memories.





	Young at Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pastelgabby](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pastelgabby/gifts).



> Much later than intended really, but here we are for miss Gabby, hopefully your recovery continues to go well.

“Mikleo!”

As soon as Mikleo looked up, he could see Sorey bounding up the hill from the direction of Elysia’s gate, blond ponytail whipping behind him.  Mikleo could swear there were tiny sparks visible around his head, even in broad daylight.  That meant Sorey was excited, and that no further work would be done today.  He set aside his notebook on the steps to their house, and waited for his lover to approach.

Sorey skidded to a stop in front of Mikleo, barely avoiding pitching himself forward into the steps.  “Guess what?” he said, in a voice that sounded only a bit winded.

Mikleo just raised an eyebrow and sighed.  “I’d guess that I was actually starting to make progress on that outline I’m supposed to be writing, and now you’re going to distract me?”

Sorey just grinned wider; he was well acquainted with Mikleo’s tactics for feigning disinterest.  “Do you remember that time as kids where we made a blanket fort and lived out of it for a week?”

“I do.”  He couldn’t remember the details of the fort, what exactly it had looked like, how many days they had camped out there.  But Lords if Mikleo could remember the sense of excitement, and the fantasies of building grand ruins to leave behind.  He also didn’t remember ever telling Sorey that story.  “Did you remember that on your own?”

“I did!”  Sorey bent down to grab Mikleo’s hands, and haul him up from the step so they could spin around.  Mikleo let him do it; Sorey’s memories were still spotty at best, so every bit of recollection was something to be celebrated.

As soon as they stopped spinning, Mikleo caught Sorey’s eye.  There was a distinctive glimmer there.  Before he could even ask, Mikleo grinned and said, “You collect the blankets and pillows from our room and the guest bedroom, and I’ll go see what I can steal from anyone else who’s home.”

“You bet!”  Sorey took the steps up to the house two at a time, and disappeared inside.

Mikleo shook his head and turned down the hill, wondering exactly how he was supposed to explain to his family that yes, they did need every pillow and blanket in the village.

* * *

 

A few hours, and several good-natured structural engineering debates later, Mikleo and Sorey stood huddled against their front door.  It was just about the only space left, given the fact that their entire front room had been taken over by the fluffiest fort in existence.

“Ah, Fort Sorey.  It’s glorious, isn’t it?” Sorey proclaimed, hands on his hips as he surveyed their new domain.

Mikleo glanced at him from the corner of his eye with a raised eyebrow.  “Excuse you.  The entire east wing would collapse if it wasn’t for _my staff_ holding it up.  I think that merits it being named after me.”

“But I was the one who thought of building a fort in the first place,” Sorey countered, and then picked his way carefully around what space was left between the edge of the fort and the wall.  He held a hand to his chin and inspected the spot where Mikleo’s staff was indeed bracing the intersection of a blanket and a pillow wall.  “You know, we could probably get the broom.”

“Excuse you!” Mikleo repeated again, louder.

Sorey was already laughing though.  He walked back to join Mikleo at the entrance to the fort.  “Okay, I won’t get the broom.  But for the name, how about Fort Zenrus?”

Mikleo let out a slow breath.  “Fort Zenrus.  That sounds perfect.”  He took a step back and made an ‘after you’ gesture.

Sorey dropped to his knees to crawl into the low entryway, and Mikleo followed.  To make sure the entrance wouldn’t collapse, they’d used the chairs from their kitchen table as a frame on either side.  It was a tight fit.  He was surprised that Sorey had made it through, but he wasn’t going to bring it up, because that would be admitting to being smaller.  Still.  After all this time.

They had built several different chambers inside, because Sorey had insisted that no proper ruin only had one room to it.  Thus, in the main area, there was just about enough room for the both of them to sit side by side, or to lie down together if they curled up close.  Sorey had already flopped out on his back into the layer of pillows cushioning the floor.  He held his arms wide as an invitation.

The corners of Mikleo’s mouth turned up, and he crawled fully into the space.  He drooped onto his back, lying on top of Sorey’s arm, and partly over his side.  He could feel the gentle rise and fall of Sorey’s chest under his shoulder.  Dim light from the lantern overhead filtered through the blanket roof, and cast the weave of the fabric into sharp detail.  Among the drapes and folds, Sorey had scattered a handful of tiny, floating sparks for a bit of extra light.

“You know, only a month or two ago you would have burned down this whole place with those,” Mikleo commented.  He raised a hand up toward the blanket ceiling and stretched out his fingers, to allow the tiny points of glowing mana coalescing there to spread and settle between Sorey’s sparks.

Sorey was not impressed.  “You never had to deal with possibly catching things on fire while practicing that trick.”

“I was also doing it when we were seven.”

“If we’re going to talk age, technically I’m only three in seraph years.”

Mikleo closed his eyes and let an amused smile part his lips.  “So, what you’re saying then, is that I probably shouldn’t have sex with you for the next fifteen years.”

“What?” Sorey exclaimed, and sat up suddenly so that he could treat Mikleo to his most insulted glare.  “That is absolutely not what I’m saying.”

Mikleo just grinned wider.  “That kind of sounds like what you’re saying.”

“Not a chance.”

For a moment, he got to think that he had won this argument.  But then, Sorey used the advantage he had from sitting to swing one leg over Mikleo, and pin him to the ground before he even realized what was happening.  He only had the time to blink up at Sorey in surprise, who was suddenly sitting across his thighs, before wiggling fingers attacked his sides with pokes and prods.

A shriek of laughter escaped Mikleo’s lips before he clamped them shut to try to preserve his dignity.  His dignity, it seemed, did not want to be preserved, because before long he was laughing breathlessly under Sorey’s hands.  His best attempts to wiggle away or fend them off proved ineffective.

When it reached the point where it felt like Mikleo’s sides would split in two, he cried, “Sorey, Sorey stop!  You’re knocking down the fort!”

“Huh?”  Sorey’s hands fell still, as he twisted his body around to see behind them, to assess the quality of their precious structure.  There was not a blanket or pillow out of place, but Sorey wouldn’t be Sorey unless he fell for that trick every time.

Mikleo used the momentary lapse in attention to grip Sorey’s arms and roll them to the side.  Sorey landed on his back with an ‘oof,’ and Mikleo arranged himself above with very little sense of urgency.  He leaned in close, hair spilling over his shoulders and around his face, hair tie lost somewhere to the pillow pile beneath them.  Out of the corners of his eyes, he could see tiny flashes of gold and blue, a field of stars brought down to earth to cluster around his head.  Sorey was looking up at him with something akin to wonder.

Slowly, slow enough that Mikleo didn’t suspect any attempt to retaliate, Sorey lifted a hand.  He caught a strand of hair with his palm, let it gently run across his fingers as he brought it to his mouth to kiss.  “What did I ever do to deserve you?” he whispered, barely audible, before letting the hair slip away.

Mikleo scoffed gently, but lifted an arm so that he could lay a hand against Sorey’s cheek.  A hand came to cover his, and fingertips lightly played against his skin, brushing with deliberate care over the gold band at his ring finger.  Sorey’s eyes were wide and bright with the same trust and love as all those years ago, and his lips stretched into a relaxed smile. 

Some days, Mikleo asked himself the same question. 

A breath passed, and then another, as Mikleo smiled back.  But then, the intentions at the corners of his mouth curled wickedly, and he said, “Nothing that’s going to save you from revenge,” and let his hands dive for Sorey’s sides.

Sorey yelped and cried, “Wait, no, not fair!”  He squirmed and kicked, but to no avail.

“You started it.”

“But I was,” he tried between laughs, “being cute!”

“If being cute was all you needed in life, you’d rule the world,” Mikleo told him, far too interested in tickling Sorey until he could barely breathe anymore to be embarrassed by his statement.

Once Sorey could hardly even laugh anymore, Mikleo halted abruptly.  He cocked his head to the side and asked, “Truce?” before leaning down to steal a peck from Sorey’s panting lips to seal the deal.

Sorey pouted impressively.  “Who are you to decide that?”

“I would have to say, the one who won.”

“Only because you relied on a dirty trick.”

“And I’ll stop using it the moment you stop falling for it,” Mikleo said, and climbed over to sit next to Sorey.  “Now, help me find my hair tie?  It’s somewhere in here.”

Both of them shuffled off to the edges of the blanket walls as best as they could, to start turning up the cushions on the floor.  A moment’s search later, Sorey’s hand shot in the air with a triumphant cry.  He brought it back down so he could work on gently smoothing out the rumpled edges of the feather attached to it.

“Ah, thanks,” Mikleo said as he held out a hand.

Instead, Sorey stretched out his legs to either side, and patted the space between with a hopeful smile.

Mikleo heaved a large sigh, and stated, “Okay, you’ve convinced me.”  He twisted around awkwardly on his heels in the small space and then sat with his back to Sorey, who began immediately carding his fingers through his hair.

“That really took a lot of convincing.”

“Shut up.”

He decided that was a good enough argument and let his eyes slip shut as he could feel Sorey’s deft fingers separating out three small strands at the front of his head.  There had been a time when Sorey had been so bad at doing his hair that he’d wanted to restrict him from touching it all over again.  But, the fingers against his scalp and the gentle tugging amongst the strands felt too good, and Sorey could do quite a nice braid now, even if he couldn’t help with any of the fancier styles Mikleo liked to wear.  He let himself fall into the sensation as more small bits of hair were gathered up and added into the braid.

There was a moment of silence as he worked, before Sorey said, “Thank you, Mikleo, really.”

“What for, building the fort with you?  You don’t have to thank me for that; it was fun.”

“No, but I do,” he insisted, but with just the hint of hesitation in his voice that said he was still trying to put together the right words.  His hands stilled for a moment as he thought, and then resumed as he spoke again.  “I’ve got all these fragments of memory, some hardly more than a flash and then it’s gone.  And some of them?  They just seem like pictures in a book, a tome dusted off for the retelling.  Like things that happened to someone else, not me.”

Mikleo wound his hands together in his lap and held them tight.  Everything in him screamed to twist around and gather Sorey into his arms.  He’d watched how difficult this process of trying to regain his past life had been.  He’d seen the flashes of confusion and hurt deep in those green eyes when Sorey couldn’t piece together some tale that had been brought up.  He’d watched as Sorey wept for friends he could hardly recall enough to mourn, and then held him in the still hours of the night when he admitted that he didn’t even feel he had the right to mourn them.  But for now, Sorey’s voice was calm and his hands steady.  Mikleo clenched his own hands tighter and let him continue.

“This though, sitting here with you and remembering?  It feels genuine.  It feels as if this piece actually fits back the way that it should."

“Sorey,” Mikleo said quietly, as the hands in his hair finished off the last of the braid, tied it off and let him free.  It had barely swung down and the tie settled against his lower back before he’d turned to see Sorey.  There was some lingering sorrow on his face, for those memories that might just never fit right, but mostly his eyes were bright.

He lifted a hand to the back of Sorey’s neck and pulled him gently into a kiss.  When he moved away, he said, “If we have to recreate every memory, I will do everything I can.”

“Well, I don’t know if you need to do that with every memory.”  Sorey laughed, a hand moving up to rub at the back of his neck.  “But, this is still nice.  And you know, I think maybe all those years ago, this was the moment I fell in love with you.”

Mikleo, who had become distracted tracing his fingers down Sorey’s arm to take his hand, looked back up with a snort.  “Sorey we were – well, to be honest, I don’t fully remember what age we were when we built the fort – but far too young to be falling in love with anyone.”

“Well, I didn’t have the words for it,” Sorey said with a pout, “but you were so bright and excited for the opportunity for us to create something together.  The way you smiled, and could always help me figure out the pieces I couldn’t, and were so invested in leaving our legacy – _ours_.  Even if that ‘legacy’ was doomed to be taken down the next time we needed to do laundry.  I still knew that feeling was special.  Something I never wanted to let go of.”  He paused for a moment to lace his fingers with Mikleo’s hand, which had finally connected with his.  His other hand came up to cup Mikleo’s cheek, to caress the skin and play with the tiny wisps of hair at his temple that couldn’t tie back into the braid.  “So yeah, I was definitely in love with you then.”

Mikleo could feel his cheeks heating, but there was a contented smile on his lips.  “You know, that’s another thing that hasn’t changed one bit – you’ve always been this cheesy.”

“That I remember.  Which also reminds me, I have a new poem I’m working on for you to look at.”

Mikleo felt his smile wobble just a little bit, but he recovered it.  “Maybe later, huh?”

“Okay, fine.  Besides,” Sorey said, and started to lean back into the pillow pile, trying to drag Mikleo with him, “this seems like a perfect opportunity for a nap.”

For a moment, Mikleo held his ground against Sorey’s weight pulling at his shoulders and stayed upright.  Sorey switched tactics and wriggled lower until he could wrap his arms around Mikleo’s waist and press his face into his side.  “I really did mean to get something done today,” he admonished, letting a hand fall gently to Sorey’s head anyway.  “Maybe I’ll get my notebook from the desk and work while you nap, huh?”

“Mikleo,” Sorey whined.  He’d used the advantage of his position to nose up the hem of Mikleo’s shirt and kiss at his waist.

“Sorey,” he replied, doing his best to imitate the whine.  It wasn’t going well.  It was hard    to do a whole lot of anything other than just caving in to whatever Sorey wanted, especially when his lips were pressing again and again to his skin.

“Could you even get to the desk right now?” Sorey paused to say, looking up with an expression which said, ‘really, I’m just being the logical one here.’  He ducked back down for another kiss.

Mikleo thought about the floor plan of their fort for a moment.  Maybe he could if he went into the next room to the right of them, but it was very possible his notebook had been sacrificed to the book pile holding a corner of the roof blanket in place.  He grumbled, and brushed Sorey’s hands away from his waist, but only so that he could lie down, too.  Sorey’s grin was massive as he settled in, practically nose-to-nose.  “What?”

“I.  Win.”

“Insufferable,” Mikleo declared.  “I don’t even want to see that smug face.”  He turned over onto his side, and then snuggled back close into Sorey’s chest, taking all the bite out of his words.

Sorey slung an arm around him, and hoisted his knee up over Mikleo’s thigh.  “That’s okay, I like this too.”

Mikleo concentrated for a moment, drawing back to himself the mana he’d used for his bubble lights.  The lightning sparks flickered out, too, although he suspected that was more from lack of concentration than anything else if Sorey really did intend to take a nap.  They were left in only the dim light filtering through the blankets, warm and close and nostalgic, and Mikleo couldn’t find any reason to disagree.


End file.
